Their love for Cebu and passion for business gave birth to a website that offers discounts and good deals in snagthecity.com.
Ingrid Espina, Lorraine Dytian, Carla Go and Frankie Gamboa have been friends since elementary school and grew up in Cebu.
When they agreed to be partners in business, they wanted an original concept.
“We thought, everyone now is going online. People shop, bank and do so many transactions online.
“That’s when we decided to create an online business that will also help the local Cebuano businesses,” Espina said.
Espina said they decided to create the first online deal site in Cebu that’s aimed at promoting deals from Cebuano companies that will not be limited to a certain sector and services only.
Dytian said the business was conceptualized in December last year. They set it up in January.
“So the first real investment is setting up the website for the online business www.snagthecity.com,” he said.
The group then approached Cebuano establishments to join them and post their promotions in the website for free.
“We soft launched the website in March this year. We got establishments to post their promotions in our website.
“For every sale or deal we get a percentage, which is how we earn from this,” he said.
Dytian said the rate of the commission for every deal depends on their agreement with every client.
Since they soft launched in March, the group said it has offered Internet surfers several good deals, like Anzani restaurant packages, where they were able to close over 40 purchases.
To sign on, a company has to fill out forms and give an exclusive promotion package to post in the website.
The group will review the company’s background and evaluate the deal.
“We also have to protect our visitors so we have to make sure that all the deals we post in the site are legitimate,” Espina said.
At present, Espina said about eleven deals are posted online for people to check out.
“So far we have had services deals for change oil, bicycle parts, restaurant meals and more.
“We’re looking to increase that and get more deals for our visitors like hotel and resort accommodations,” she said.
The partners are also focusing on small and medium enterprises that don’t have a big budget for advertising.
“This one is very measurable. We post their products for free and then when there’s a deal, we only get a portion of that. It’s that quantifiable and easy.”
“All they do is agree and sign the contract with us and we do the rest like the designing of the post, some description and hosting of the website because some would say that they already have the website,” she said.
She said online deal sites have already grown in terms of popularity.
The advantage is that reaches potential customers beyond Cebu.
“People can also purchase a deal and then assign it to a different recipient as a gift and when you say deals, it’s already discounted.”
To purchase a deal in the site, one has to register and accomplish four simple steps to supply information such as e-mail address and contact numbers, then make the payment through credit card, bank transfers, bank payment, PayPal, check payment and even pickup payment arrangements.
“We wait for the payment like the check and once it’s cleared, we send the buyer a voucher that they will have to print and present to the establishment selling the deal. To claim it the buyer needs to present valid IDs,” Espina said.
The group is approaching more companies to try their site.
“We usually tell them that posting deals online in sites like snagthecity.com is a very efficient way of marketing their products or services because the rate of incidental purchases is really high.”
“Oftentimes people browse and then buy deals in the same site,” Espina said.